As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some information handling systems may include embedded systems management software or firmware that can be used to notify users about potential hardware problems. Such information handling systems often communicate alerts associated with detected hardware problems over a network connection to a remote monitoring location.
In typical embedded systems management implementations, the information associated with detected hardware problems is communicated over a separate sideband path from the primary data flow path. In some such implementations, the subsystem responsible for systems management is coupled directly to a single network controller over a system management bus (SMBus), or a multi-master bus such as an inter-integrated circuit (I2C) bus. Such systems are susceptible to failures in the network controller, and to failures elsewhere on the network to which the network controller is connected. That is to say, if a network failure renders the network controller to which the embedded management system is connected inoperative, remote management of the server is not rerouted through another network controller, even if the primary data path is rerouted to another controller.